


3rd Planet

by aIIegro (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Coda, Coda s14e18, Episode: s14e18 Absence, Guilty Dean Winchester, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), M/M, References to Depression, Songfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 06:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18888733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/aIIegro
Summary: "Your heart felt goodIt was drippin' pitch and made of woodAnd your hands and kneesFelt cold and wet on the grass beneathWell outside naked, shivering, looking blueFrom the cold sunlight that's reflected off the moonBaby cum angels, fly around youReminding you we used to be three and not just twoAnd that's how the world beganAnd that's how the world will end"─"3rd Planet" by Modest Mousecoda to the episode "absence," castiel finds himself hurt and upset by dean. he's old, tired, and, frankly, sick of living. but the earth is kind of beautiful and the sun will rise again.





	3rd Planet

“You’re dead to me.”

Castiel, an Angel of the Lord, stood before Dean Winchester, the Righteous Man. 

“You’re dead to me.”

Castiel, an angel, stood before Dean, the Righteous Man. 

“You’re dead to me.”

Castiel, a sliver of grace possessing a vessel, stood before Dean, a man with hardened but pure soul. 

“You’re dead to me.”

Castiel stood before Dean. 

“You’re dead to me.”

Cas stood before Dean. 

“You’re dead to me.”

Cas stood. 

“You’re dead to me.”

Cas walked.

“You’re dead to me.”

Cas fell. 

It had been a long time since he had fallen but this time it felt different. Before, it had been liberating. Now, it was suffocating. _Curse humanity,_ Cas thought, gingerly leaving the room. He ambled towards his truck, his thoughts a raging storm inside his head. Vaguely comprehensible thoughts clambered and tripped over emotionally charged thoughts as he pulled open the driver side door and lifted himself into the seat. He simply sat there for a minute, wavering between crippling awareness and numbing shock. He could feel Dean’s words crushing something in his chest, aching worse than the time the angel tablet was pulled out of him. Humourlessly, he laughed at the idea that human _emotions_ would hurt him, an Angel of the Lord, more than any other torture he had been subjected to. He sat there for another minute. Absentmindedly, he stuck his key in the ignition, reversed, and drove away. The entire time, he was in autopilot. The turmoil within his mind had calmed to an eerie buzz, reminding him of the sheer _emptiness_ he felt when he was an angel. 

_I_ am _an angel,_ Cas thought, angrily trying to cling to his “angel” status. 

“Are you sure?” A small voice in the back of his mind whispered, the ‘s’ dragging into a slight hiss for an almost unnoticeable moment. It was all too familiar; it was doubt. Or maybe it was a part of the Empty that had tagged along for the ride, feeding off his self hatred and tired grace. He didn’t care anymore. 

_I am an angel,_ Cas said to himself. 

“Are you still?” The voice murmured, the hiss a little longer and the tone a little stronger. 

_I am an angel,_ Cas screamed to the doubt, but mostly to himself. 

“Are you certain?” It was loud enough now to feel like a spoken thought. 

“I’m not an angel,” Cas whispered absentmindedly. The car engine hummed, but not in response. 

“That’s better.” The voice stayed quiet for a while afterwards. 

Miles and hours ticked by, and it soon became startlingly clear that he was not headed for the Bunker. Cas let himself continue. The crushing ache in his chest seemed to be done by hands now. It felt like they reached at something deep within his grace, wringing the last shreds hope and joy out of it like water from a sponge. Their fingernails dug into him and pulled at whatever they could grab, uprooting his serenity and splitting his skull with powerful fingers. The hands grasped his right shoulder and he thought of Dean. They gripped him tight and flung him far into the darkness of his mind. There was little to take away from him, but Cas had now lost it all, it seemed. It was painful, and it was suffocating. Suffocating. He felt his hands grasp the steering wheel tighter as he made a U-turn and made his way back to the general direction of the place he had just left. It all felt hazy, and he wasn’t entirely sure where he was. A string of events had mashed together and he was going wherever he took himself. He didn’t care anymore.

It felt awful, actually.

Cas couldn’t shake the image of Dean’s cold, rage-filled eyes from his head.

Funnily enough, it felt like a breakup. 

Checking the time on his dashboard, Cas was surprised to find that he had been driving for 5 hours. Four hours in the wrong direction and he was one hour into heading back. Somehow, it felt calming to know he had quite a bit of distance between him and the Winchesters. Reassuring, almost...relieving. He felt guilty about this, but wasn’t it justified? It wasn’t entirely his fault, even if it felt that way. Dean had given him an ultimatum, what would he do now? Head back and pretend it never happened? See, Cas found it rather off-putting when he and the Winchesters would run into an argument but never exactly follow up on the emotional stress of the aftermath. It was tough, and there was never any clear idea of how Cas would redeem himself. Maybe if he was truly human, he would have some notion, some inkling of an idea, but he was an angel, so these aspects were lost on him. It left him feeling hopeless and utterly at a loss of what to do. Instead, he tried pulling a Winchester.

_It’ll be okay. I’ll drop the topic and keep my distance._

“Pretty smart, pretty smart.” The voice peeped, still strikingly and unsettlingly familiar. Cas brushed it off, blaming the doubts on the stress of the night and his fatigue. Really, he didn’t care anymore.

Fatigue? Strange. He hadn’t noticed until just now, but he did feel tired. His joints were stiff at the wheel, and it was like each millenia since his creation was catching up to him. It was weird remember how immortal he was, considering he had died at least five times.

 _All for the Winchesters,_ he thought bitterly before shoving the thought to the side. 

“Yes, the brothers. It’s always them isn’t it?” Cas was beginning to find the voice incredibly annoying the more it spoke. He ignored it. In return, it bothered him for the rest of the drive.

Light was starting to break through the midnight blue sky, hauling a dazzling ring of bright yellow hues with it. The clouds, sparse in the mostly-clear view, were glowing red-orange, faintly contrasting the ever-lightening deep purple above. The warmer colours cast themselves onto the mostly human-less landscape and through gaps between leaves and their branches. The light wriggled through those gaps and dappled the road ahead of Cas and his truck with brilliant patches and streams, almost like tiny spotlights. The sun itself (the sun that Amara almost killed) was pure white, possibly the only thing remotely comparable to the light of an Angel’s grace, steadily glowing in an everyday display of indescribable power.

Everything just brought Cas more anguish. Ex-angel, former human, previous “God,” current (and future) failure. Just _existing_ was already a constant reminder of that. In a moment of peak emotional distress, Cas pulled to the side of the dusty road, distantly noticing how years of cars had worn faintly visible grooves into the compacted dirt. Breathing heavily, he heaved himself out of the car before the internal waves could crash down on him and leaned on the door, leaving it open to the cool morning air in the middle of nowhere. 

A placed his right hand over his heart and grasped at his coat, the tan colour vaguely shifting into a darker, oak-like hue. There it was; his heartbeat was as still a constant within him, regardless of how fast or slow it went. It felt good because it grounded him the same way the roots of a tree kept it in the earth. Cas felt as old as a tree as well, ancient and witness to many things. As the sun continued its trek into the height of the sky, he thought of the inky, pitch black goo that had crept out of his mouth during his Leviathan experience. It was the opposite of all good, just like he was. His hand stayed in place as he slowly hauled himself back into the truck, the age clearly wearing down on him as he started up the vehicle and kept driving towards the Bunker. He had to keep going, even if he didn’t care anymore. He had to do it for Jack. For Sam.

And he would do anything for Dean.

He just didn’t care anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> let me know if you'd like me to continue, i kind of like this ending  
> \--  
> find me on tumblr @yonaih


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